WEATHER
Half an hour after dawn
a muddied smudge
of orange-grey sky
shows itself too taciturn
to even think
about greeting me
proffer me
best wishes wish could
all things being equal
be
my very last day
our
very last day
so little clarity available
as if the Earth itself
has acceded to geopolitical demands
for complete disinformation
everything
getting smudged, getting scrambled
that might conceivably
stand in the path of power
getting its way
the days not like this, not
like this
when I was born, when
I stood upright the first time
though by a whisker
no longer pre-nuclear
and moist certainly not like this
first day
some outlier, outrider,
pioneer
of our species stood
up on his or her legs
upright as
can be,
decidedly all
surveying his/her environs as never
done before actually
turning three-sixty as the
radius of his/her own axis
taking in the world
from
horizon
to horizon
fearless creature, perfectly adroit
to embrace its historic fate
— those words soon to flow as tongue
got the hang of it:
destiny, agency,
purpose,
solidarity
beginning of our
bitter conceptual battles with the realities of time
not as
absolute as first thought when
picking up speed
sharpening our sight
we
tested for elasticity
came to agree (astonishingly) on
massive relativity
and the chaos of
the cosmos
within all strictures of regularity
and the chaos
of the weather
except for the horror of the certainty of
death
by warming
death
by freeze
postscript to
our lead-giver
death
of
all acceleration towards
that lithe, now
deeply muddled dream.